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Ubi-App: a ubiquitous application for universal access from handheld devices

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Abstract

Universal access from a handheld device (such as a PDA, cell phone) at any time or anywhere is now a reality. Ubicomp Assistant (UA) (Sharmin et al. in Proceedings of the 21st annual ACM symposium on applied computing (ACM SAC 2006), Dijon, France, pp 1013–1017, 2006) is an integral service of MARKS (Sharmin et al. in Proceedings of the third international conference on information technology: new generations (ITNG 2006), Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, pp 306–313, 2006). It is a middleware developed for handheld devices, and has been designed to accommodate different types of users (e.g., education, healthcare, marketing, or business). This customizable service employs the ubiquitous nature of current short range, low-power wireless connectivity and readily available, low-cost lightweight mobile devices. These devices can reach other neighbouring devices using a free short-range ad hoc network. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the UA service is the only service designed for these devices. This paper presents the details of Ubi-App, a ubiquitous application for universal access from any handheld device, which uses UA as a service. The results of a usability test and performance evaluation of the prototype show that Ubi-App is useful, easy to use, easy to install, and does not degrade the performance of the device.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Paula Stroud, Karl Stamm, and members of Ubicomp Lab, Marquette University, for commenting on earlier drafts and for their valuable assistance in improving the readability of the paper. We also thank the users who participated in our study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    Shameem Ahmed, Moushumi Sharmin & Sheikh I. Ahamed

Authors
  1. Shameem Ahmed
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  2. Moushumi Sharmin
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  3. Sheikh I. Ahamed
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shameem Ahmed.

Appendix: Questionnaire for evaluation

Appendix: Questionnaire for evaluation

  1. 1.

    Overall, how would you rate the service? (1 = very bad, 5 = excellent)

  2. 2.

    Overall, how would you rate this application? (1 = very bad, 5 = excellent)

  3. 3.

    Assess the usefulness of the services: (1 = burden, 5 = very useful)

  4. 4.

    How easy is the application to use? (1 = very hard, 5 = very easy)

  5. 5.

    How easy is it for you to provide input? (1 = very hard, 5 = very easy)

  6. 6.

    How easy is it to navigate the interface? (1 = very hard, 5 = very easy)

  7. 7.

    How easy is it to establish the initial wireless connection? (1 = very hard, 5 = very easy)

  8. 8.

    How easy is it to get the desired output after performing an action? (1 = very hard, 5 = very easy)

  9. 9.

    How effective is the interface for the small screen? (1 = not at all, 5 = very effective)

  10. 10.

    How effective is the “Help” section? (1 = not at all, 5 = very effective)

  11. 11.

    Which feature do you feel is unnecessary?

  12. 12.

    Which feature do you think is most useful?

  13. 13.

    Who will benefit the most from this application?

  14. 14.

    Will you choose this application if it is free? If not, why?

  15. 15.

    Would you recommend this application to a friend? If not, why?

  16. 16.

    Can you recommend any other users who can use this software?

  17. 17.

    Can you recommend any other features that should be incorporated in this software?

  18. 18.

    Please indicate any other suggestions or comments for improvement that you may have.

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Ahmed, S., Sharmin, M. & Ahamed, S.I. Ubi-App: a ubiquitous application for universal access from handheld devices. Univ Access Inf Soc 7, 273–283 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-008-0117-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-008-0117-0

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